Divine Rehabilitation Toledo: Broken Refrigerator Since July - OH
The temperature gauge read 50 degrees. The facility's own logs showed it had climbed as high as 65 degrees. Safe food storage requires staying below 42.
The fix the kitchen staff had landed on: prop open the door to the walk-in freezer, which sat directly behind the refrigerator section, and let the cold air bleed through. The Director of Maintenance told inspectors the refrigerator had been failing since the beginning of August. The Director of Dietary said it had actually stopped working in July. Both said the same thing about what was being done to repair it: maintenance had submitted requests, and they were waiting on funding and bids to be approved.
There was no plan in place.
The freezer door workaround was not a solution. It was a tradeoff. Every time staff cracked the door to cool the refrigerator, warm air flooded the freezer. Inspectors noted ice accumulating around the freezer fan, a visible record of how often the door had been opened and how much condensation had built up as a result. The Director of Maintenance acknowledged that the refrigerator temperature didn't stay below 42 degrees during evening hours, or at other times during the day when no staff were available to stand there and manually manage the door.
Nobody was watching the temperature around the clock. Nobody could.
The Director of Dietary told inspectors that kitchen staff had been instructed to move the highest-risk items, eggs, raw meat, and dairy, out of the refrigerator and into the freezer itself, to keep them safer. But she also confirmed that other items remained in the refrigerator that could potentially spoil from the inconsistent temperatures. There was no internal thermometer inside the walk-in refrigerator when inspectors toured the kitchen, meaning the only temperature reading available was the external gauge.
Of the 78 residents living at the facility at the time of the inspection, 76 were receiving food from the kitchen. Two residents, identified in the report only as Resident 34 and Resident 19, were not.
The Regional Administrator, interviewed on the final day of the inspection, confirmed that the refrigerator was not maintaining appropriate temperatures, consistent with both the facility's own temperature logs and what inspectors had observed directly. The Administrator said no residents had shown signs or symptoms of gastrointestinal illness related to foodborne illness at that point.
That is a narrow assurance. It speaks to what had happened so far, not to what the broken refrigerator represented every night when the kitchen emptied out and there was no one left to prop the freezer door open and watch the thermometer creep upward.
The inspection was conducted in response to a complaint. Inspectors classified the violation as having the potential for actual harm, though they found no evidence of harm that had already occurred. The deficiency was cited under the standard requiring facilities to store food at proper temperatures and serve food in accordance with professional standards.
What the logs documented was a refrigerator that had been failing for weeks, in a kitchen feeding 76 people, held together by a workaround that depended on staff being present and a freezer that was accumulating ice damage every time someone opened its door. The repair requests existed. The funding had not been approved. And on the morning inspectors arrived, the temperature gauge still read 50 degrees.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Divine Rehabilitation and Nursing At Toledo from 2025-08-20 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Download the official CMS inspection PDF from Medicare.gov
Additional Resources
Data source: This article is based on inspection data downloaded directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) via Medicare.gov. CMS releases inspection reports in bulk; we publish the findings as documented by state surveyors in the official Form CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies.
Plan of correction: The CMS report we receive does not include the facility's plan of correction. Facilities submit plans of correction separately to state survey agencies and those responses may not be reflected in CMS data at the time of publication. The absence of a plan of correction in our data does not mean one was not filed. Readers who want information about corrective steps taken are encouraged to contact the facility directly or their state survey agency.
Corrections may have occurred: Inspection reports reflect conditions observed on the date of the survey. Facilities may have implemented corrections, staffing changes, additional training, or other remediation since the report was issued. We report what CMS provides and encourage readers to seek current information from the facility.
Editorial process: Inspection findings are extracted from CMS source documents and synthesized using AI, reviewed for factual accuracy against the original report by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: September 22, 2026 · Our methodology
DIVINE REHABILITATION AND NURSING AT TOLEDO in TOLEDO, OH was cited for violations during a health inspection on August 20, 2025.
The temperature gauge read 50 degrees.
Health inspections identify deficiencies that facilities must correct. Violations range from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the full report below for specific details and facility response.